Seems like you might be right because i loaded up Alpha 06 and then just after researching HEAT rockets mk 1 i used the give all cheat so that i could access vtols and it turns out that the HEAT rocket mk1 upgrade added 72 damage to the lancer vtol so that would explain why I'm seeing the extra damage

Having said that however I'm of the opinion that giving the lancer vtols 30% is to much if they are also going to get the HEAT rocket upgrades from Alpha campaign because at 3000+ damage you have no hope of defending against them because they will one shot even your strongest units, and that 30% is based on them not getting the upgrades from Alpha.

so I think either there lancer vtols shouldn't get the HEAT rocket upgrades from Alpha

or

the amount there lancer vtols get from the 3 heat rocket upgrades and the 2 HESH upgrades should be dropped to 20%

because 240 / 100 x 20% = 48

240 + 48 + 48 + 48 + 48 + 48 = 480

480 x 4vtols = 1920 total damage

which is survivable just barley if all you have is composite alloy mk3 armour upgrade.

That i think is a fair level where there lancer vtols are still sufficiently dangerous enough that you can't ignore them but there damage isn't so overwhelming that you simply can't defend against them.

seems like the most likely culprit for weapons being overpowered is as Berserk Cyborg already pointed an artefact caused by squishing all the research into a single file to make it easier to work with which probably means that probably all weapons will be affected although in the case of most of the other weapons this effect isn't that noticeable since the majority of other weapons are underpowered anyway.

well at least we know what is going on now, and why its happening which should make it simpler to fix.

I changed all six slow rocket damages to be 20% (land based lancer damage = 256 on Beta 1 now). There was something called radius damage which I reduced also. Anyway, on Beta 3 I let all four VTOL lancers hit a python tracked commander with 4748 HP. All of them combined reduced its HP to 1596 = 3152 damage total = 788 per lancer. Another way to look at it is a python tracked lancer which has 1909 HP. It would take three lancer VTOLs to land all of their rockets to take one down.

Try one of your Beta 3 saves with the above mod (if you don't see the changes you may need to start Beta over). I don't know if this will affect Alpha campaign, particularly Alpha 12, in a negative way though...

I think this calculation is not correct. At Beta 03 the collective VTOL lancers got 3 upgrades, not 5 like in your calculation. And the damage is per rocket and every lancer shoots 2 rockets. That brings me to the following:

240 + 48 + 48 + 48 = 384

384 x 4 VTOL x 2 rockets = 3072 total damage.

If your goal is 2000 total damage the calculation is this:

Total damage 2000 / (4 VTOL x 2 rockets) = 250 damage per rocket

250 is the damage after the 3 upgrades of 20 % per upgrade so for the base damage for the code we have to divide it by 1.6

250 / 1.6 = 156.25 base damage for the code

If we still want to have the relation of 1 : 1.5 tank lancer damage : VTOL lancer damage ( at the moment in master 160 : 240 base damage) we should change it to 100/150 or 120/180. A base damage of 100 for tank lancers would lancers bring closer to the damage of heavy cannons (at the moment with a base damage of 70 in current master). And that would make it easier for us to balance heavy cannons this way that they are no longer useless in relation to lancers.

And if we don't decrease the value of the upgrades to 20 % the calculation is this:

base damage: 150

30 % increase with the upgrade: 45

150 + 45 + 45 + 45 = 285 damage per rocket

285 x 4 VTOLs x 2 rockets = total damage 2280

And attached to an experienced commander a heavy body lancer with 1909 HP could possibly survive that.

Edit:By the way: where in the code I can find the bonus values my units get for experience like moving faster, taking less damage and so on?

#define EXP_REDUCE_DAMAGE 6 // damage of a droid is reduced by this value per experience level, in %#define EXP_ACCURACY_BONUS 5 // accuracy of a droid is increased by this value per experience level, in %#define EXP_SPEED_BONUS 5 // speed of a droid is increased by this value per experience level, in %

I think this calculation is not correct. At Beta 03 the collective VTOL lancers got 3 upgrades, not 5 like in your calculation. And the damage is per rocket and every lancer shoots 2 rockets. That brings me to the following:

actually by the time you get to beta 03 the lancer vtols will in fact be getting 5 upgrades not 3 because the 3 rocket upgrades from alpha campaign are also applied it never used to which is why the upgrade value was set at 30% to account for this but due to the changes that have been made the upgrades from alpha are also applied to units on beta now as i understand, well assuming it if I've understood Berserk Cyborg comments on this correctly that is though I'm sure he can confirm if this is the case or not, in any event I'll leave you guys to decide how best to adjust the lancer vtols damage.

They should be getting only three damage upgrades (from Alpha) up to Beta 3 unless some other research item pulls in more. Not that it matters if there are one or two more since lancers don't seem to be as powerful now.

I think this is still too much. I made two mods with base damages of 100/150 and 120/180 for ground-based lancer/VTOL lancer.

Unfortunately, I have no saves of Beta 03 or Beta 02 I can open with the current master. So Bethrezen please check these mods with your saves if your units can survive the VTOL attacks. We should decrease the base damage as much as necessary but as less as possible.

I think this is still too much. I made two mods with base damages of 100/150 and 120/180 for ground-based lancer/VTOL lancer.

Unfortunately, I have no saves of Beta 03 or Beta 02 I can open with the current master. So Bethrezen please check these mods with your saves if your units can survive the VTOL attacks. We should decrease the base damage as much as necessary but as less as possible.

i get where you are coming from but isn't the damage value given in the design screen for both shots ? so in the case of ground based lancer it shows a value of 400 so wouldn't that make each individual rocket 200 ? like you I'm not sure on that point either.

In any event I'm downloading the latest master and I'll report back shortly.

if you like i can attach my alpha beta interlude save.

[edit]

Ok so one unintended side effect I notice right away is that the changing the lancer upgrades seems to of affected ground based lancer as well, where before on beta 03 ground based lancer had a damage value of 400 in the design screen they are now down to 320, err??? ok that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Can you not set 1 value for air units and 1 value for ground units?

If not looks like we'll need a different approach to addressing the overpoweredness of lancer vtols, because clearly it's not going to be as simple as rescaling the upgrades.

Bethrezen wrote:i get where you are coming from but isn't the damage value given in the design screen for both shots ? so in the case of ground based lancer it shows a value of 400 which would make each individual rocket 200, like you I'm not sure on that point either

It's right, I'm not 100 % sure. But the calculation with the old settings and the base damage for both shots is:

You reported a damage of 3000 when the VTOLs attacked your commander in Beta 03. And with this maximum damage, the VTOLs should never ever be able to destroy one of your heavy body tracked lancer, what they did. If we calculate the base damage for every rocket the maximum damage doubles up to 3684. And with the bonuses by experience for your commander, this calculation explains the damage of 3000 you saw. So at the moment, this is the only logical explanation for me.Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong but with the information I have at the moment this seemed to me the way like it works.And for my calculations, I didn't take the values from the design screen but from the weapons.json file.

Bethrezen wrote:if you like i can attach my alpha beta interlude save.

Ok so since neither of us are sure precisely how the damage is calculated, I decided to try a little test

I build a rookie tracked heavy body lancer and then used the give all cheat to allow me to build lancer vtols I then build a single lancer vtol and ordered it to fire on my own unit, you can do that by holding the alt key

Now the lancer has1909hp after the attack it's hp was 785 so

1909 - 785 = 1124 damage inflicted

Now the damage value displayed in the design screen is 600 so that must mean that that it's 600 per rocket for a total of 1200 minus any damage reduction modifiers.

So it looks like you might be right it seems as though the game counts the damage of each rocket individually instead of collectively so when it displays 600 on the design screen that is not for both rockets as you would expect but only for 1 rocket which should probably get fixed because that’s misleading as lancers are far more powerful than they appear.

For my next test I build a rookie heavy body tracked commander which had 4748 hp again i ordered the vtol to attack it and again it inflicted 1124 damage so if each lancer vtol is inflicting 1124 damage assuming both rockets register a hit that should be a total damage of 4496 from 4 attacks

I then ordered my vtol to attack the commander another 3 times to simulate the damage that would be sustained from the collective lancer vtols and while the total damage done was a bit inconsistent because both shots didn't always register a hit it was consistent enough for me to extrapolate that the previous estimate of 4496 total damage is pretty close to the mark and is consistent with what I've been seeing from the collective lancer vtols.

Obviously there is a bit of variance here because I was using rookie units to attack rookie units so this doesn't take into account the damage reduction from things like rank or from being attached to a commander etc. it does however explain why my units have been getting decimated by the collective lancer vtols because if all 4 gang up on a single target there is no way in hell your units can stand up to that sort of damage, to be honest seeing the results of this test I'm not even sure a heavy body tracked heavy cannon unit could withstand that level of damage, although this is just supposition since i haven't actually tested that, but its a reasonable assumption based on the available evidence.

ok so reworking my calculations based on the testing above if the total damage being done by the collective vtols is 4496 assuming that all rockets register a hit in order to get that damage down to around 1900 which would be just barely survivable for most of your more lightly armoured combat units such as lancer / mini rocket / bombards etc all of which have 1909 hp then the damage of the collective lancer vtols needs to come down by about 58%

4496 total damage / 100 * 58 = 2607.68

4496 - 2607.68 = 1888.32

1888.32 total damage / 4 vtols = 472.08 / 2 shots pet attack = 236.04

so when you look in the design screen lancer vtols should have a damage value of about 235 or 240

which is pretty close to what you worked out previously but again this is for rookie units that only have composite ally mk 3 armour and are not attached to a commander, this also assumes a 30% modifier from the rocket upgrades as i did this with the previous master since the 20% modifier had unintended consequences on the ground based lancers so should probably be reverted.

Although to keep things balance you could certainly drop the damage of the ground based lancer a bit more I probably wouldn't drop them to less then about 350 though which is equivalent to only getting hash rockets mk1 on beta 01 because on beta 1 your lancer start at 304 damage HESH Rockets adds 48 points of damage which is a damage value of 352 when you go to the design screen.

[edit]

Ok so my next was test to see what effect rank would have on the damage a single vtol could inflict so I next ordered my vtol to attack one of professional rank tracked heavy body lancers

The units has 1909hp after the attack it had 1073hp so

1909 - 1073 = 836 damage inflicted

So

836 damage inflicted x 4 vtols = 3344 total damage

4496 total damage done to a rookie unit - 3344 total damage done to a professional unit = 1152

4496 /100 x 25% = 1124

So the difference between the damage done to an unattached rookie unit and an unattached professional units is about 25%

so if we assume that the vtols has a damage value of 235 when you go to the design screen then that would be

235 /100 x 25% = 58.75

235 + 58.75 = 293.75

so in theory that would be a damage value of around 290 or 300 when you go to the design screen if you take into account experience

Using observation on the current master it would take four Collective VTOL lancers to take down a tracked python lancer unit with no experience (it seems the second rocket does nothing should its twin hit the same target). Heavy cannon python tracks could probably take 2-3 more VTOL units having only Alpha alloys. And, on Beta 3 master, I let all four collective lancer VTOLs hit an inexperienced commander and it had 1596/4748 HP afterwards.

Using observation on the current master it would take four Collective VTOL lancers to take down a tracked python lancer unit with no experience (it seems the second rocket does nothing should its twin hit the same target). Heavy cannon python tracks could probably take 2-3 more VTOL units having only Alpha alloys. And, on Beta 3 master, I let all four collective lancer VTOLs hit an inexperienced commander and it had 1596/4748 HP afterwards.

actually during my testing I found that sometimes the second rocket misses and the game only registers a single hit instead of 2 hits so I'd double check that because i suspect that the second rocket just missed and that the observed damage should be higher although if you are using the current master with the 20% modifier for research instead of the previous master with the 30% research modifier then obviously you are going to see slightly different results.

don't believe me replicate my testing your self use the give all cheat so you can access vtols on say beta 2 and then have the VTOL force file on one of your own units. you can make units force fire on your own units by holding the alt key do this a few times and you will note that sometimes both rockets hit and the game registers 2 hits form a single lancer vtol sometimes only a single rocket will hit and occasionally both rockets will miss, and the same holds true for the collective vtols as well.

There is an element of randomness to this so obviously in the calculations above I'm assuming a worse case scenario where a single unit takes all 8 hits at 562 damage each for a total of 4496 damage.

now if 4496 damage is what 4 of my lancer vtols can do in a best case scenario then i would assume that the collective vtols would be something smiler obviously its not going to be quiet as high as this because you need to factor in things like rank, being attached to a commander which complicates things some, you also need to factor in the fact that your units are more weakly armoured then those of the collective because when i did this testing i was using the project heavy body not the collective heavy body because i didn't want to mess with the results by testing on something you can't get on beta 03

the upshot of all of this is that you can figure out with a reasonable degree of accuracy what the damage value should be in order for there vtol attacks to be survivable by taking the hp of the unit in question in this case a tracked python lancer with 1909 hp dividing that by 4 and then dividing it again by 2 which comes out at 238.625 which matches with what i calculated above.

[edit]

also just been looking at the collective vtols damage on the current master and I'm still seeing my tracked python AAA units get one shotted by there lancer vtols and they are tougher then lancers although lancer have the advantage of rank and being attached to a commander where the AAA units are all rookies and not attached to a commander since commanders can't target air craft

also that reminds me i noted something a little odd about the way the vtols spawn instead of just flying in from off screen as you would expect then just appear on the ground and then take off which is not correct they are supposed to fly in from the air base in the northwest corner of the map as you can see in this screen shot of the mini map taken from v1.10

Bethrezen wrote:also that reminds me i noted something a little odd about the way the vtols spawn instead of just flying in from off screen as you would expect then just appear on the ground and then take off which is not correct they are supposed to fly in from the air base in the northwest corner of the map as you can see in this screen shot of the mini map taken from v1.10

I loaded up your interlude save, "let me win" all the way to Beta 3 and watched a VTOL hit a python tracked hurricane unit (professional rank). I admit I now see that it does count the second rocket, but it is far from a "one shot" (unless you let them all hit the same droid, which should be dangerous). With both rockets hitting I see that unit's HP go to 1652/2232. My guess is that the research change is only seen on saves that have not already granted those rocket damage upgrades yet.

2232 - 1652 = 580580 / 2 = 290 damage per rocket

Now I watched the other three VTOLs all land their six combined rockets onto the same kind of unit and left it with 492/2232 HP. And the math checks out since I saw all six rocket hit it which means 290 x 6 = 1740 damage and 2232 - 1740 = 492.

Then I went into the save file and changed all experience to zero for every droid and what I saw was predictable. The first unit, a rookie, had 1444/2232 (now 394 damage per rocket). The one that absorbed all six rockets before, however, died this time.

If we want to weaken the VTOL lancer even more, then I would suspect bringing the base damage below 200 would be a good start.